Canada’s biggest whisky, spirits and beer festival is back for its 16th year and, for the 15th time, it’s bigger than ever.

Hopscotch has upped sticks from its long-term home at the Rocky Mountaineer Station to the spacious PNE Forum, where a Grand Tasting Hall four times the previous size will flow in full force on Friday and Saturday.

“After two years of sellouts in one weekend, we were like, OK, it’s time to move, there’s obviously demand here,” says festival president and executive director Adam Bloch.

“My job became organizing a show to telling people it’s sold out, which is not so much fun.”

With more than 100 exhibitors pouring more than 250 different kinds of whisky, beer, tequila, vodka, gin and rum from around the world – and from right here in B.C. – the Grand Tasting Hall promises an extraordinary liquid feast (and there’s food on hand, too, thankfully).

In recent years the festival has grown beyond this array of alcoholic abundance, with pairing dinners and educational seminars running all this week – almost all of them sold out well in advance.

It’s a far cry from the event’s origins as a scotch and beer showcase in a function room of the Hotel Vancouver in 1996, with the markets for Scotch, whiskey and craft beer having “exploded” since then, Bloch says.

The event is now increasingly drawing recognition around the world, with distillers from Scotland and brewers from as far afield as Australia taking time out to fly over and meet and educate their consumers in what is their life’s passion.

Education has always been a cornerstone of Hopscotch – whisky tasting seminars are usually the first events of the festival to sell out – along with appreciation, Bloch maintains. It’s not about getting tanked.

“Our mandate has been and always will be based on education and appreciation of the art that is craft beer, whisky and premium spirits. … There’s love that goes into these products, and that’s what people have come realize – you’re not drinking scotch just to get intoxicated, you’re going to enjoy the moment.”

But that doesn’t mean there’s a hushed, reverential air to proceedings. In fact, a good deal of Hopscotch’s success is purely down to the fact that it isn’t your traditional pinky-up wine festival.

Experts and newbies alike are welcome. And there’s something unique in the atmosphere at the Grand Tasting Hall, where the livelier aspects of beer festivals mingle with the more refined whisky crowd and the exuberance of those seeking new frontiers in gin, rum, tequila and vodka. (Peanut butter and jelly vodka, anyone?)

“You put them in the same room and they’re there for the same reason, and it creates this kind of vibe that I can’t explain, it’s a goodwill that I can’t describe,” says Bloch, the excitement evident in his voice.

“Hopscotch is just different. It’s so fun … You could eat the vibe emitting off the crowd,” he says.

If this unique mix of demographics is one major factor for the festival’s growth, then another is the changing tastes of consumers.

Artisan products are increasingly in demand, and with that naturally comes a refining of people’s palates and a desire for new flavours and sensations.

“When I was 18, 19, scotch was only for my dad and his friends,” Bloch says.

“No one I knew or no one in my demographic drank scotch. Now I’m 32 and all of my friends drink scotch. It’s become much younger … and now a huge demographic of people who come to Hopscotch for the whisky are women.

“Our society changes. [Scotch] was an old man’s drink and society has been recently saying it’s not just for affluent old men, it’s for everybody and everybody can appreciate it. …

“If you go into beer, beer was thought of as the blue-collar drink of choice. People are realizing there’s not just lager, there’s porter, stout, IPA, pale ale, and you can age beer in casks.

“I guess what’s happened over the last 10 years is that people realized there’s an art behind beer like there is an art behind wine. That’s been the major thing.

“When I first came to Vancouver seven or eight years ago, you went to a bar and every tap was just a generic beer. Now pretty much every cool bar has craft beer on tap. It’s amazing.”

Bloch maintains, too, that there’s something in the Vancouver temperament that has made the city such a hotbed for these craft products, and contributed to the roaring success of Hopscotch – in spite of the No-Fun City tag.

“Vancouver is just such a cool city,” says Bloch, who’s originally from Toronto.

“The people are just cool. They seem to appreciate life and living in the moment and living in the present and working to enjoy their life – versus Toronto, which is just a grind of trying to get by.

“So if you have that personality type as a whole in a city and you put them in a place that’s there to specifically enjoy the moment, the slow speed of what they should be enjoying … Vancouver is the perfect host. It’s a refined city, it’s an upscale city, we’re an upscale show … it’s like the perfect marriage.”

And perfect marriages can only grow. Bloch says the sky’s the limit.

Having taken a half-sold-out show six years ago to a near sell-out four times the size, he’s been eyeing up the Coliseum next door to the PNE Forum as a potential future site. A sister festival was held in Kelowna in September, while next year Hopscotch makes the push east with a Toronto show.

“If you’d have asked me six years ago if this show would have a 6,000 ticket limit, I would have laughed in your face,” Bloch says, “… and now it’s realistic. There’s no reason why this show can’t have 15,000 people. The market’s taking off, interest in products is growing every year.”

Tickets for the Grand Tasting Hall on Friday and Saturday are still available at hopscotchfestival.com, $50, including five drink tokens and a transit ticket home.

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